The latest round of changes to the Civil Procedure Rules has also seen the publication of Practice Direction 31B (PD 31B) which covers the Disclosure of Electronic Documents. PD 31B comes into force on 1 October 2010.
The new practice direction can be read in full here. It is to be found in Annex 1 (see p 22).
The new Practice Direction was introduced to regulate the approach practitioners should take when considering material relevant to a case which is stored electronically. In particular it aims to focus the parties on the sources of electronic material and give guidance to those with less experience of dealing which such issues. This will apply to cases that are or likely to be allocated to the multi-track. There are rule changes which support the new Practice Direction by confirming that the questionnaire may be treated as a disclosed document. Form N150 is amended to support this change.
